Indian envoy: Ties with Pakistan ‘filled with promise’

India’s relationship with Pakistan is “filled with promise,” and New Delhi is “willing to go the extra mile” to improve the South Asian neighbors’ traditionally adversarial ties, India’s ambassador to the United States, Nirupama Rao, says on this week’s episode of “Conversations with Nicholas Kralev.”

Thorny issues like the future of the disputed territory of Kashmir should be “resolved peacefully, not through militancy directed at our people from Pakistan,” Rao adds.

She also talks about how Indian diplomacy is practiced in the 21st century, and why diplomats need to interact more with private citizen. “We don’t live in ivory towers or work in detached environments anymore,” she says. “The oxygen for a diplomat today is to be able to communicate with people in the ordinary environment that surrounds us, to make ourselves more comprehensible.”

Rao, who joined the Indian Foreign Service in 1973 and was foreign secretary before coming to Washington in 2011, describes the principles of India’s diplomacy. “Do we like to preach or do we like to be didactic? Do we like to be instructional in the conduct of our foreign policy? That is not the approach that India follows,” she says.